You Can't Advertise Soda on a Sword and Sorcery Site

Every Tom, Dick and Harriet Company now seem to think the New New Thing is to announce your next new new product in Second Life, with Sun and Dell being the latest up.

I don't know who is advising them (well, actually I do...see below) but this is a becoming a bad idea, since:

(i) It has been overdone, it is just so not cool anymore - the buzz being created is more Wilde than Wild now (see Sun's here and Dell's here).

(ii) It is inconvenient for the intended audience if they have to log in to 2nd Life for the show, as it takes quite a few hours to handle a 2nd Life avatar competently - even less complex sites such as Habbo Hotel can have their problems for participants (see here for the pitfalls one can experience).

(iii) The tone is wrong for Dell - with an exclusive only audience it flies in the face of the whole "inclusive" movement that Web 2.0 is (or was - since the Web 2.0 Conference last week was apparently invite only maybe this is the New New Trend. Mayhap Mash and Cash don't mix?).

OK, its another small step for mammon - but why 2nd Life anyway, why not elsewhere?

It’s all to do with Wizardry.

It is apparently very hard to credibly advertise todays' products like computers, soda and other consumer stuff in a medieval "Sword and Sorcery" gameworld (except Swords by Wilkinson maybe?). Unfortunately all the other large Virtual Worlds (Runescape, World of Warcraft) are basically Dark Age dreamlands. (See here for a quick 101 on Virtual Economics.)

In other words 2nd Life however has enough virtual footfall (1 million alleged Avatars) to be interesting, and flogging today's consumer crafts to Trolls and Wizards is just too incongruous.

However, Second Lifers are apparently getting fed up with the grief these PR "flacks" are causing. After all, most people's wishes for Paradise do not include hucksters, billboards, boorish touristi and all the 1st Life hustle they are trying to get away from (I assume anyway), so (shock horror) the cool school are heading out to the islands, setting up private spaces and leaving the virtual inner cities to the Griefers.

For example, one major area called DreamLand (about 10% of Second Life) has just voted to ban PR flacksters from their turf. This report on the Nov 11th edition of the Second Life Herald is indicative of the anger welling up.

"Especially with the engagement of public relations firms in the space, a few corporate players have demonstrated their willingness to take advantage of early Second Life pioneers' achievements in unethical ways. It appears to have become common practice in certain corporate circles to copy concepts that have long been pioneered by Second Life residents, to then make false claims of inventorship in the real world media. Examples are companies that falsely claimed to launch the '1st radio station in SL', '1st fashion brand in SL', '1st tabloid in SL' or to be the '1st company launched in SL'. All these concepts have already been pioneered for years in professional, successful and profitable ways by lesser known Second Life residents."

Androids may dream of Electric Sheep, but not with advertising on their flanks.

Taking things further, there are now episodes of protest art and the Second Life Liberation Army has placed bounties on the heads of the Ad agencies bringing corporates into Second Life.

Linden labs, (Second Life's Creators) in the meantime have been raising prices on the islands, allegedly to stop property flipping but many residents think this is to stem the flow of Virtual Refugees away from the (commercially) richer soil of the Mainland. Whatever the reasons, prices are going up and commercialism is rushing in where avatars fear to tread.

But, even assuming the flacksters become more sensitive to the virtual environment, the issue longer term is that asking people to pay more to be bombarded with Messages from Our Sponsors is not sustainable in the long term, as by and large we (virtually and really) don't like commercialism except as a bribe to get at something else we want more cheaply than we otherwise can get it.

I am thus waiting spellbound for the first Ad-supported Virtual World that pays you for the amount of time you spend on it.

After all, if Google can give away mobile phones for free, paid for by advertising, then giving away a Virtual Mansion and adjacent Billboard should be a bagatelle.

You read it here first

Now, being contrarian we're going the other way...brewing Virtual Mead to sell on Runescape. Its just that programming all those virtual bees takes so darn long.....